Integrating Skill Challenges With Combat

First, the fiction. I feel like much of this will be self-evident, but lets just make sure.


Each character in 4th edition will have (bare minimum), a Race, a Class, a Background, and a Theme (Heroic Tier). At every moment, a GM's job is to make the conflicts inherent to these PC build components (and related Quests) the focus of play, to represent the antagonism/obstacles which interposes itself between the heroes and their goals. The GM does this by framing action which imposes thematic, interesting decision points upon the players representing their PCs. The outcomes of these decision-points should have immediate repercussions that in turn, change the situation adversely or favorably.


In a Skill Challenge, you have a win condition and a loss condition. Once the scene is over and the mechanics are resolved, the unfolding narrative should emerge with a story win or a story setback or loss.


Ok, with that obligatory bit out of the way...


What would this look like integrated with combat? How does one accomplish interesting, relevant noncombat resolution (of the 4e variety) in the midst of combat. Let us start with the fundamental goal of combat:


Opposing sides try to prevent the loss of something precious.


That precious thing could be a great many things (life, territory, a loved one, a charge, honor, the sanctity of a vow, a work, etc), but combat is about losing something you don't want to give up. So what should the stakes of a Skill Challenge which is integrated with a combat be about? Typically, rather than being an alternative to combat, it should be related to the stakes of the combat in a way that if the PCs choose to ignore it, they do so at their peril. Peril here could be either (a) it will involve a related story loss, (b) it will negatively impact their combat goal, or (c) preferably both.


So how about an example:


One of the PCs is a Sohei Theme with the Background of Pivotal Event - Possession. Someone within her mountain temple had invited an Abyssal entity into their midst and, in cruel irony, weaponized the warrior-monk (who had taken a vow to protect the priesthood). When she finally either was able to fight off the clutches of the demon (or it released her), she realized the horror of her slaughter. Evidence pointed to a coup and, ultimately, she (and the other PCs) tracked down the cult as they were carrying out their demonic master's wishes by desecrating the ancient barrow where the generations of the temple's holy protectors were each interred after their vigil had ceased.


And by desecrated, I definitely mean re-animated to fight for the wicked cause, of course.

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Alright, second installment will be about the mechanization of integrating Skill Challenges with Combat.

Feel free to talk amongst yourselves about any of the above or spitball how one might mechanize the above example.

Points for thinking about the game on a higher level, but there are a couple things you should clear up:

1) Your goal of combat varies from D&D's goal of combat. That might confuse your audience. And me.

2) Does "winning" the skill challenge supersede the combat rule outcome? Because parallel rule sets can produce both a win and a loss. If you're into the binary sort of conflict resolution.

Did it REALLY release her? I always liked the way DW puts it, the DM's main (soft) move is "reveal an unpleasant truth"

DMMike said:

Points for thinking about the game on a higher level, but there are a couple things you should clear up:

1) Your goal of combat varies from D&D's goal of combat. That might confuse your audience. And me.

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I'm not sure combat has a specific goal in either 4e or any other particular form of D&D. I mean, we played a LOT of 'classic' D&D. There were a lot of reasons to fight a battle. I guess the 'default' reason was 'lootz', but that got stale pretty fast. I think 4e's default is at least nominally the same, but in both systems some form of story advancement, implying conflict resolution, was always pretty prevalent, IME. Granted, there were surely times when we were not in the mood to think about anything but mayhem and loot.

2) Does "winning" the skill challenge supersede the combat rule outcome? Because parallel rule sets can produce both a win and a loss. If you're into the binary sort of conflict resolution.

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Yeah, you'd have to spell out the possibilities. I think MOST situations make the combat outcome primary, as losing a combat is usually fatal. Once you're dead, typically, other considerations become moot. Still, I can imagine some other scenarios for sure. Another common pattern might make the combat the most immediate concern, but winning the SC part could have more long-term strategic consequences. This could be a good scenario for putting the PCs on the horns of a dilemma. Win the battle and survive, but allow the rift to open and eventually destroy the world (requiring some much more difficult process to fix). The PCs could of course instead elect to die in order to avert the greater evil. A really clever scenario might make that the only other viable choice!

Of course, being D&D, death need not be the end. In fact the story arc which [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has outlined could well be one where that sort of choice would be interesting. The PCs could elect to sacrifice themselves, perhaps the one character being described might even do so partly out of a feeling of guilt, as a way of penetrating to the core of the mystery at hand. Certain rituals and protections, or perhaps the favor of certain beings being first gained, the characters could guarantee themselves to awaken in an undead state. Still capable of self-willed action they could then work 'from the other side'. Of course they might find it difficult to return to a normal existence after such a sojourn. It would certainly be part and parcel of some interesting PP/ED material!

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], I'll wait for you to elaborate your example before responding to it.

In my 4e experience, skill challenges during combat have generally been to deal with (what would traditionally be called) a trap/trick/hazard. Though occasionally there have been social skill challenges going on during combat.

I generally take the rulebook at face value, and treat these as one or two level appropriate creatures for encounter-budgeting purposes (I wouldn't normally use a skill challenge of complexity greater than 2 in a combat situation). I use the DC-by-level chart for difficulties. Whether failed checks simply cost an action in the combat sequence (which is a type of loss in itself, though admittedly a bit boring) or whether they trigger affirmative adverse consequences, will depend on what I might have written down during prep, and my mood, and my imagination.

This thread has a couple of actual play examples (in the first and twenty-second posts).

[MENTION=6685730]DMMike[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - to me, asking "what happens if one fails but the other succeeds" is like asking "what happens if we beat these 3 people but the other 2 don't get beaten?" From the point of view of the fiction it's a partial win, partial loss; and from the point of view of mechanics you just adjudicate it as the mechanics requre.

Eg if monsters keep spawinging until the portal is shut, then they keep spawning. If the world ends if the portal isn't shut, the world ends. If the portal gets shut but then the party is TPKed, well (as AbdulAlhazred says), that was a heroic sacrifice!

In other words, I don't see any real difficulties in respect of this.

Where I think it can get tricky is in more prosaic aspects of 4e resolution: integrating action economy into the skill challenge, making sure consequences (especially for individual failures as the thing unfolds) are (i) fair and (ii) engaging (just as one hopes is the case in monster design), etc. This is an area where p 42, and wrecan's advice about tier-appropriate conditions, can certainly help - plus a wilingness to embrace the gonzo that is 4e!

pemerton said:

Where I think it can get tricky is in more prosaic aspects of 4e resolution: integrating action economy into the skill challenge, making sure consequences (especially for individual failures as the thing unfolds) are (i) fair and (ii) engaging (just as one hopes is the case in monster design), etc. This is an area where p 42, and wrecan's advice about tier-appropriate conditions, can certainly help - plus a wilingness to embrace the gonzo that is 4e!

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Yeah, one of my epiphanies was when I asked myself "why does an SC have to fit into the action economy?" That is to say, its happening in combat, so the combat part and the SC part interact SOMEHOW, but it can be purely in terms of fictional positioning or through some other currency than action economy (healing surges/hit points clearly come to mind). I think actions DO make sense, but they can be a high cost and often lead to players just choosing to do things like finish off the combat part first. You can of course structure a scenario to work around that, but maybe sometimes it is best to just let people make skill checks and fight at the same time. Maybe that also breaks your "the SC is just like a monster or two" model though, since that supposes that the 'monster' absorbs some of the party action economy.

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I agree with you that dogmatic approaches here won't be helpful, and that 4e has many moving parts that can be exploited to make things work in a desirable way.

For whatever reason, the players in my game - especially the wizard/invoker player - are happy to spend resources (eg actions, action points) in non-combat resolution, and so I personally haven't been pushed hard on the "just finish the combat part first". But I can see how at other tables that could be an issue.

Because of that feature of our table, I have generally just taken a "standard action required" approach - and you're right that that links to the encounter budget issue - but I'm sure there must have been occasions (though I'm not rembering any particular ones at the moment) when I've allowed a minor action (perhaps for free, perhaps with a penalty to the check), whether because it seemed fair, or "made sense" in the fiction, or just fitted the flow of play.

For all that I can recall, I may even eg have allowed a particulary devastating attack to serve as an Intimidation check in a social challenge, which would be an example of relying purely upon fictional positioning in the way that you mention.

AbdulAlhazred said:

I'm not sure combat has a specific goal in either 4e or any other particular form of D&D.

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Manbearcat is trying to mechanize...mechanics. So it's troublesome to say that the goal of combat is to "prevent the loss of something precious," which is not a D&D rule (mechanic?). In D&D, the goal of combat has historically been to fight until the opposition stops taking turns, primarily by hit point attrition. So...two different goals.

Then there's the skill challenge goal, which is (correct me if I'm wrong) to roll enough skill check successes before too many failures.

If Manbearcat is actually talking about fluff, like:

Can we make the fictional purpose of a skill challenge mix with the fictional purpose of combat?

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then sure, we could discuss that, but the thread then goes in a different direction. Which is why pemerton...

pemerton said:

[MENTION=6685730]Eg if monsters keep spawinging until the portal is shut, then they keep spawning. If the world ends if the portal isn't shut, the world ends. If the portal gets shut but then the party is TPKed, well (as AbdulAlhazred says), that was a heroic sacrifice!

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...doesn't see any difficulties.

One thing that I think needs to be considered is action economy (assuming that the SC is endemic to 4E or, at least 4E style games). Not all PCs are equally dependent upon the full suite of actions each round (minor, move, standard, possibly immediate). To choose but one example, the Warlock needs to move (for Shadow Walk bonus), minor (for Curse) and standard (attack) each turn, whereas a Rogue may only really need to use a standard action, since some of its attacks have built-in movement, and its defenses/class abilities do not rely upon additional actions.

In the example you helped me with in another thread, one way of dealing with this is thinking of party actions/round rather than individual PC actions: requiring at least one PC dedicate a move/standard/whatever action per round to resolving elements of the SC worked into the combat, rather than requireing each PC dedicate actions in this way.